Jeanette Jerome was the daughter of a prosperous American financier and a socially ambitious mother. In 1867 she and her two sisters were taken to Paris by their mother following a scandalous escapade involving their father, and her education and introduction to society followed the manner of the European upper classes. In 1873 she met and charmed young Lord Randolph Churchill, son of the duke of Marlborough, and they were married in 1874. Her American vivacity, her wit, and her beauty assured her of social success in London. During the 1880s she provided valuable support for her husband’s political career, not only as a hostess but through active campaigning (some historians have suggested that she was effectively Lord Randolph’s campaign manager). She also played an instrumental role in the founding of the Primrose League, a sociopolitical organization that provided a forum for the discussion of the issues of the day and facilitated political involvement in the Conservative Party by both men and women. Lord Randolph’s death in 1895 left her for some time at loose ends.

In 1899 Churchill founded and edited the few numbers of the lavish but short-lived Anglo-Saxon Review. During the South African War she raised money for and staffed and equipped a hospital ship, the Maine, which did valuable work in South Africa. She also turned to writing, producing a volume of discreet Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (1908); Her Borrowed Plumes (1909), a play starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell;The Bill (1913), another play; and Short Talks on Big Subjects (1916), a collection of articles originally published in Pearson’s Magazine. She married two more times, and in her later years her behaviour was characterized by some as increasingly eccentric, though there had always been those in Victorian Britain who had seen Churchill’s independence and originality as eccentric.